Words to think with

(Cross-posted at In Search of the Perilous Realm)

The semester has dwindled to a sliver of its former self, the way an ice cube shrinks when you pour water over it in the sink, and I am just watching and waiting now for the last few weeks to melt away. And I'm studying, of course. And rehearsing. And writing papers. And memorizing lines. And planning summer projects. And summer trips. And summer work. And next semester's classes. And vacillating, all the while, between bleary-eyed complaints about the workload and moments of utter wonder that I am allowed to eat and drink and breathe history, literature, philosophy, music; that I have lived through the hardest winter in living memory to see a spring which is the loveliest in history, as every spring is; that I love and am loved by a woman who is fair and seemly and wise beyond my highest hopes; that I continue to wake up every morning to find that someone else has been up before me scrubbing the sky and pulling up the sun and pouring dew on the grass—in short, that I keep on living in God's good earth under God's bright heaven. This must be the way a sprout feels when it wakes up from hibernation in its seedpod to find itself planted in rich soil with clean air swirling around it and the sun beaming down overhead.

Meanwhile, time slips away from me and it's early morning and I should try going to bed. I oughtn't to be blogging at all, except that I was studying late and broke policy and bought a coke and now I'm awake on caffeine. I'll rue it tomorrow.

I heard a lecture this morning about modern women who are writing—Annie Dillard and Toni Morrison and people like that. It was a good lecture from start to finish, but this simple quote stood out to me. It comes from Toni Morrison, whom I've not read. It returns to the question of ownership, which I've pondered before, but Morrison makes it more personal that Steinbeck did:

Freeing yourself was one thing; claiming ownership of that freed self was another.

Words to think with, words to live by...

About the Teaching of Art

(Cross-posted at In Search of the Perilous Realm)

Should art be taught for enjoyment or understanding? Or can it be taught for both? I've been wondering about that for a few months. Last fall I had some talks with my mom about the place art should have in a curriculum based on relational principles (i.e. Charlotte Mason). Now my college semester has begun, and with it my fourth and final semester of humanities. We've been studying history chronologically, so this semester is about the 20th century. We've already studied plenty of modern art.

I've noticed, however, that all we study are the avant-garde, envelope-pushing works. We've looked at Matisse and Picasso and Munch, watched Stravinsky's Rite of Spring, listened to atonal music and talked about Schoenberg's twelve-tone system. Our discussions of "what's happening in art" during the 20th century have focused on modernism and post-modernism: the rejection of traditional Western aesthetics, experiments with other styles, and the serious, searching art that was produced as a result.

[Admittedly, the literature we've studied—World War I poets, W. B. Yeats, Pygmalion—has been more traditional. (In other words: no Joyce!) We haven't studied the literature as art, however, but as illustrations of contemporary ideas. The WWI poets demonstrate the two ways people looked at the war (romantic, patriotic sentiment versus shocked, disillusioned realism). Pygmalion expresses and criticizes the behaviorist principles of B. F. Skinner. And so on.]

I understand to a point why we ought to study the latest developments in art. The state of the arts can tell us much about the state of a culture. But my question is this: why do we privilege progressive art over works created in older styles, works which may do nothing to advance the art of art, but which are still profound and moving and beautiful? Why the bias towards the new?

I asked two of my professors this question, separately, and got several answers. One professor replied that, in a survey course such as humanities, we have limited time, and have to focus on the tip of the spear, so to speak, as art moves forward. He explained that, once you hit the 18th and 19th centuries, old styles no longer die out as new ones are born; thus by the 20th century you end up having neoclassical, romantic, realist, and a whole list of other styles all being used simultaneously with the developing modernism. That modernism is the new element, so that's what needs our attention. But just because we're not studying the other art of the 20th century doesn't mean it's not important.

The other professor replied that the humanities course is focused on understanding art rather than enjoying it. (This professor, by the way, enjoys art as much as anyone I know.) I may be misinterpreting him, but I think his point was this. When we look at the diverse collection of 20th century styles, most of them are ones we have studied before. Romanticism we met in the 1800s; neoclassicism in the 1700s. So, while artists may still be using those styles, they offer no new perspective on the human condition. The new styles, those that offer a different approach: those are the ones we can learn from. Those are the ones that add something substantial to our understanding of the world.

I think I understand their arguments, but they don't satisfy me. If students are taught to understand art—that is, to analyze it—without being taught to enjoy it, then education has missed the point of art. If we approach a work only to extract its philosophical underpinnings, then we have forgotten how to listen, and if we do not listen, we cannot learn. Art must be experienced, not merely studied. We learn from art only when we respect it enough to build a relationship with it. That means entering without an agenda and without trying to analyze. It means entering with attention, even with humility, to ask the art what it means.

Any good art will be rewarding if we take the time to build that relationship with it. In saying this, I disagree with the bias towards new art. I don't mind learning about the new as well as the old; we have to know the whole history in order to understand where we are now. What bothers me is the tendency to say that an artist must say something new in order for his work to have significance; to say that the only legitimate, honest art is that which speaks in the most current dialect; to say that today's questions can only be answered with today's artistic styles.

If art were like science, always gaining more knowledge, always correcting old theories, then the bias towards new art would be necessary. But art is not progressive like science. An old work of art, or an old style of art, has as much to say to us now as the art that is current. Plenty of music composed in the 20th century was sophisticated and significant without abandoning tonality or aesthetic standards. Vaughan Williams comes to mind, as does some Prokofiev, or later works by Stravinsky. Plenty of literature written in the 20th century was beautiful and meaningful without abandoning traditional narrative structures or poetic forms. I'm thinking of The Lord of the Rings, or the poetry of Edna St. Vincent Millay, or Yeats's lyrical works.

We can gain as much by getting to know these traditional works as we can by studying new styles. Atonal music, abstract art, stream-of-consciousness literature, and the like may be more "advanced" (that is to say, newer). But that does not make them more valid or more valuable than art which says well what needs to be said, whether it has been said once or a thousand times.

Ah, life.

Well, here I am back in my school dorm room again with the semester's first classes waiting for me in the morning. A great deal happened this summer, and I wanted to blog all about it all before the summer ended, but there you have it. Life waits for no man. And it's too big to fit into a few blog posts, no matter how thorough your writing is. Some things will always slip through the cracks. In my case the cracks just happen to be several months wide...

There was the Taming of the Shrew, for instance--rehearsals, and production week, and the performance in our backyard, and the reception and cleanup afterward--which all ended more than a fortnight ago. There was the ChildLight conference, of course, which happened months ago; I wanted to blog about it in more detail but I still haven't. There was my sudden sightseeing trip to Washington, D.C. last week, with visits to the National Gallery and the National Cathedral and the Shakespeare Library and more. And above all there's a story involving Regency dancing and midnight Poe readings and lots of prayer and a rainbow for good measure, which if told in full would be quite tolerable evidence that gentlemen and ladies still exist--and still end up together.

So, yes, that was my summer. The Unblogged Summer, one might call it, except I can think of so many better names for it.

Maybe there are some good ideas buried in those textbooks, after all.

I was doing homework for my (summer school) speech class today, reading from a textbook about how to improve one's listening skills. The writing for the most part is efficient, scientific, and dry as dust. As I read, however, I realized that some of the ideas sounded familiar:

There are four major techniques [for remembering information]. The first is organization. Find a pattern, structure, order, plan, format, or framework.

Of course, I said to myself, because the mind feeds upon ideas. If you understand the overall structure of a thing, every detail of it will make more sense and you will be able to remember the whole more easily, because you will know how each piece fits within the whole. CM knew that: she didn't hold with the classical method, which taught facts first and ideas later; she started with ideas, and let the facts follow them. I thought to myself, "Ha! A CM reference!" and kept reading. The next sentence:

The second is association. Make the things you want to remember relate to each other or to categories you already understand. Group them, if possible.

Well, certainly, I said. Education is the science of relations, after all.

The third technique is vizualization. Picturing what you want to remember creates a strong, vivid memory of it.

This sounded quite prosaic and scientific until I got about halfway through and realized that all it means is use your imagination. I began to get curious. Were there any more good ideas beneath all that scientific language? I read on:

The fourth is repetition. When you repeat ideas, you burn them into your memory.

At this point I threw up my hands and laughed--or at least, I would have if I had been the sort of chap who does such things. An old truism, and one that sounds suspiciously like habit formation, to boot. I suppose I must reassess my position on textbooks a little. I still hold that they are mostly dead and require Miracle Max or a reader trained in CPR to breathe any life into them. After today, however, I must admit that they at least know where to go to find good ideas. Even if they do it unintentionally.

Halloween and quothiness

I hope everyone had a good Halloween! I spent mine at a Harry Potter party with a company of college friends. There were about a dozen of us, all dressed as different characters. Harry and Ginny were there, in Quidditch uniforms, and Hermione and Neville and Ron and some of the other Weasleys. A professor came as Dumbledore, and his wife dressed as Professor Sprout. There were Rowena Ravenclaw and Fleur Delacour and Lily Evans (Potter). And I was Snape. We had a great time: there was a trivia contest and a movie, and plenty of nerdy discussion and merriment.

We had an excellent lecture in chapel last week about All Saints' Day, and its importance as a Christian holiday, celebrating the church itself: the saints present and past--the company of believers we live among and the cloud of witnesses that fights with us. I wish I had time to write more about it.

Meantime, there are a couple of quotes that struck me this week. This one was in the chapel service: "Perfection, in a Christian sense, means becoming mature enough to give ourselves to others." That's from Kathleen Norris, 20th century poet and Benedictine oblate. While looking up that quote I found several others from Kathleen Norris that were good, among them: "Just the knowledge that a good book is awaiting one at the end of a long day makes that day happier." I think I shall have to read some of her writings.

I also liked this quote from the photographer Gary Monroe: "One must have an appetite for failure. Ninety-nine percent of my photographs are near misses. I don't make photographs for recognition. I make them for my edification."

A product of the day's work

Although it's not really fair to call it work, because it's a lot of fun. Today in photography class we made prints from our negatives. This is a crop from one of mine. (The full size is a much larger version of the same crop.)

In short

I'm up late because I've been studying for my first test next week; I and two other guys have been at it for the last few hours. We got to develop our film in the darkroom today, for the first time! That was fun (though tedious and anxious at times). All but two of my pictures came out well. I've also been doing some people-watching--or maybe I should say people-studying. It's interesting to observe people (or better yet interact with them) and study their personalities. And I'm also starting to get to know people better. There are quite a few now that I'm past the "Hi, I know your name!" stage with.

A bit of Millay, please

Well, I'm back from a long weekend! Thursday night the internet went out here and it was sporadic for a couple of days. Friday afternoon I had a freshmen exam--not a graded one, thankfully, but something the college does for its own purposes. It wasn't difficult (like an easier version of the SAT) but it reminded me anew how much I hate really, really dislike standardized tests.

Right after the exam I left with the rest of the choir to go on an overnight retreat. We stayed at a lodge in the Appalachian mountains, playing games and worshiping God and getting to know each other better. Saturday morning, before we left, I got to go on a gorgeous hike to see a waterfall in the woods.

Today was what I'm coming to call my Long Day. From nine to five: Speech, Old Testament, Humanities, Lunch, Photography, Theater Work, Choir. I actually have so much (especially when you add to that two or more hours of music practice) that I'm considering dropping something. I visited my mentor today and talked it over with him. He said that I should at least wait until after the exams next week (yes, next week; they sure come fast!). Then I'll know better how I'm doing with studying, and if I still want to withdraw from a class I can do it then and it still won't affect my GPA.

This evening after choir I had my first experience accompanying a singer on the piano. Two singers, actually; I'm accompanying their duet. It was...interesting. I'd only practiced the piece twice, so I wasn't able to play it and ended up playing the chords. The practice went alright, but I wasn't happy. I need to learn the music.

Tonight I went to the library because I decided that I needed some Edna St. Vincent Millay to read. It's not good for a person to go too long without poetry. I did end up finding a book, after long looking (they use the Library of Congress cataloguing system rather than the Dewey Decimal). I also did some studying and met somebody new. He was working the night shift at the library desk, studying a bilingual Beowulf between helping students like me find the books they wanted. When I brought my Millay to the counter and I commented on his Beowulf he asked if I was an English major. So we talked a little. He's an English major, a junior this year; and his name is also Tim. (Which makes three Tims and a Tom now at this college...)

I'm finding that you learn more here than they teach you in classes. Like the impossibility of doing all you want to do in twenty-four hour days; or the way tears can sneak up on you at unexpected moments. Or how you need God always, whether you remember it or not. As one of my professors said: "The purpose of college is not to prepare you for a career. It is to teach you how to live."

In which I get wet and don't mind

Some mornings you can just tell when you get up that it's going to be a good day. The sun is shining, you feel clear-headed and refreshed, and the hint of some happy dream tickles your memory. Some mornings, on the other hand, you wake up long after your alarm with only thirty minutes before you have to be somewhere, and you have a shower to take and somebody has left the bathroom door locked on the inside, so that you have to stand there with a screwdriver for ten minutes trying to get it open.

Guess which sort of morning this was. But luckily it was not a portent of the day ahead. Of course, I did leave my umbrella in my room because the weather looked fine, and of course it did rain this afternoon, but what can you expect when you go out without your umbrella? (And I promised myself yesterday I would never again live in an umbrellaless state.)

Today was another full day of classes--similar to Monday, except with a piano accompaniment lesson in the morning and a voice lesson instead of theater work in the afternoon. I received my instructions for accompaniment today: I'm to accompany two students during their lessons, as well as practicing with them during the week and doing performances with them. Which could be a great experience, or could be nearly impossible depending on how many and how difficult are the pieces the students are doing.

Our humanities class was assigned the first few books of the Odyssey today, and our professor strongly recommended that we get together in groups and read it aloud. I found another student who was interested in doing that, so he and I met in the cafeteria after dinner and read the first three books, taking turns reading aloud. It was great fun. I think we're going to try to do the same with future assignments. (We actually heard that another group of students got together and did the same thing this evening, so maybe in the future we could collaborate. Beowulf is coming up...)

Tonight I've been working on a paper for my photography class (on Jacques-Henri Lartigue), organizing and scheduling and shopping-list-making, and listening to Berlioz's Requiem and some Rachmaninoff with my roommate.

Currently listening to: Mozart's Haydn Quartets

In which I enter on a course of serious study

Today was my first full day of classes: Speech at 9:00, Old Testament at 10:00, Humanities at 11:00, lunch at 12:00, Photography from 1:00 to 3:00, work in the theater from 3:00 to 4:30 (they're still moving into their new theater; today we moved a bookshelf full of old scripts from upstairs to downstairs), choir practice from 4:30 to 5:30, and then dinner. My classes are all great--in Humanities we sat in a large circle and narrated / discussed things from our readings; in photography we learned about shutter and aperture and the other basic functions of the camera, and I had my first quiz--not a difficult one. In Old Testament we've been reading the first few chapters of Genesis, and today we discussed what we can learn (merely from the first part of the OT) about the natures of God and man. The best part was when the professor first asked what we learn that God is, and two people simultaneously said "just" and "merciful".

A selection of cameras in the photography classroom.

But it was a long day. My first experience with nine-to-five, I guess you could say. After dinner I was listless, until at twilight I decided to take some homework outside and read. I met my voice professor and we talked a while. Then I went back to my room and one of my suitmates played some Broadway for me (I may be helping him to prepare a piece for an audition). After that my roommate got in from music practice, and we've been listening to Cecilia Bartoli and some of Chopin's ballades and discussing Salieri and Stravinsky.

"I have formed my plan, and am determined to enter on a course of serious study. ...By reading only six hours a day, I shall gain in the course of a twelvemonth a great deal of instruction which I now feel myself to want."

Sunday

Another short post, 'cause I have a 9:00 class in the morning. I stayed at home last night, which was nice, although everyone was tired after the fair. This morning I went to a friend's church, which is near the college, and then went back to the college to study. Studied all afternoon; went to the library (checked out my first book, for a photography assignment); had dinner at the restaurant, 'cause the cafeteria closes early on Sundays. At 9:00 I went to the vespers on campus, which was an out-of-doors worship service. Afterwards they had a bonfire and everyone roasted marshmallows. (A friend and I tried to start a game of duck-duck-goose, but for some reason it didn't catch on...)

Kind of blurry, but you get the idea.

After that I went back to my dorm room and met my roommate, who's been gone for the weekend. And then I finished my homework. When I've posted this I'm going to go pack my backpack for tomorrow morning.

On Studying Out-of-Doors (or, a panegyric on choir practice)

Today was my first day of studying. I didn't have any classes today, so I was able to work from 9:00-4:00. I took my books outside and sat on a bench in front of the dorm during the morning. Then I took a break for lunch (where I managed not to drop my salad on the floor, like I did yesterday). After lunch I found a quiet stairway in an unfrequented part of the campus and did as much studying as I could there, until I had to go back to my dorm to use the computer. (Lesson: bring the laptop next time.)

It was lovely in the shade, but the studying outside does have its drawbacks. Stairs, however unfrequented by human traffic, are not therefore free of ants, gnats, bees, and other bugs of less certain description. (The sweat bees got me twice today.)

After that was choir practice. We did a few warm-ups, and then went right into sight-reading our music. And the sound! So many voices singing together, four parts dancing in and out with each other, coming together at moments of shimmering harmony to make chords that are almost tangible--sound that envelops you and lifts you up and sustains you until the last breath--that was glorious. It seemed to be over very quickly. Even some of the seasoned choir-members, juniors and seniors, said that they don't often sound that good.

After that I went to the school's annual Fiesta on the commons, where they had quasi-Mexican food (spicy rice-and-bean egg rolls?) and a cliche Mexican band. After dinner was convocation, which today meant a guest speaker in the chapel. The speaker was pretty good, but it took them half an hour to get to him. The president of the college introduced a local judge who introduced the lieutenant governor of the state who gave a short address and then turned it back over to the judge, who introduced the speaker for the evening.

An instrumental trio gave a prelude to the address

When that was over I went back to my dorm and did some more studying, breaking it up with piano practice--I tried sight-reading a Beethoven sonata. It went fairly well, but then I had chosen the easiest one I could find. I attended the mandatory residence hall meeting in the evening, and came back and did some more studying. (I did actually finish my homework.) Luckily I have a 10:00 class tomorrow morning, so I can sleep a little.

First Day of Classes

This post will have to be short, I'm afraid, because it's past my bedtime. My classes started at 9:05 this morning--or rather I thought they did, but it turned out my piano class wasn't supposed to be until next week. So my first real class was Old Testament; right after that was Ancient and Medieval Cultures; after lunch was Photography; and in the evening was concert choir. None of the classes had real work today, it was all introductions and handing out papers and going over syllabi. But I think concert choir is going to be the hardest as far as time commitment. Their rehearsals and performances may cut into a lot of my classes. And I can already tell that my Old Testament professor assigns more homework than his wife, the Humanities professor.

After choir the school had a scavenger hunt. We divided up into teams by our mentor groupings and raced all over campus finding different clues and fulfilling the requirements (like playing leap-frog or dressing up and pretending to be in a music video). We raced to be the first team to make it to the prize (an Applebees gift card, I think) at the drive-in theater about thirty minutes drive away. There was some confusion about who won, but our team was awarded the prize. After that most of the freshmen went to the drive-in and saw The Dark Knight, while I went to Wal-Mart and got some much-needed dinner and three-ring binders for my papers. And I've spent the rest of the evening organizing and scheduling and writing and doing a little homework (now there's a concept for a homeschooler).

Registration

The day began a little earlier today with three men converging upon a single bathroom, the result being that one did not make it to the morning meeting in time and had to slip in the back door after it had begun. (Suffice it to say, the bathroom schedule will need to be remedied.)

But after that morning meeting (which was about the internet and phone service on campus) I had several free hours, so I wandered around identifying buildings and looking for the locations of my classes. I found the library, and the main class buildings, and the music offices, and the sports center with the swimming pool. The pool is on the far side of the campus, about ten minutes walk from my dorm, but that is the farthest I'll have to go anywhere on campus. (One benefit of a small school.)

In the afternoon I had a meeting with my mentor to review the class schedule that we put together for me several months ago. I'll be starting with 17 credits, which is a lot: the minimum for a full-time student is 12. But I'm looking forward to my classes. Humanities is the backbone of the curriculum, and I've done so much literature that I have a headstart there. When I got my box of books for my courses I was pulling out the literature selections one by one and saying "Read that"--"Started that one"--"I did this last year". This semester it's mostly epic poetry like the Odyssey and the Aeneid and Beowulf.

After reviewing my schedule I went through registration, where I filled out a student profile, got my ID tagged, got a parking tag for my car, had my picture taken for the yearbook, and had my records checked one last time. Then I went to the music offices and worked out times for my music lessons. In the evening they were taking all the students to a water park which is just five minutes from our house (the college itself is about forty minutes away), so I went early by myself and came home for a while before I went to the water park. I was in the water for a while, watched a very silly synchronized swimming contest, and played some more volleyball. When they started breaking up I and a friend from my dorm went home in my car. (Yes, I said MY car. I didn't blog about that, did I? Bother.)

Before leaving the water park. It's a bit blurry because it was starting to get dark.

And now I'm back, watching people run up and down the hall in our dorm, waiting for my roommate to get in and hoping to get an early start in the morning. For then school begins in earnest. MUSC 130/Applied Study (Music)/Accompanying--9:05 sharp.

Feet-Wetting

Currently: listening to my roommate's piano practice.

Today the whole freshmen class was taken to a nearby summer camp (which is in its off-season at the moment). They had a ton of things to do there--a man-made lake with volleyball and basketball and a trampoline and zip lines, as well as a scenic train ride through the forest and frisbee golf (which I didn't do) and mountain biking (which I don't do) and free ice cream (which I very much did). They even had a plastic chess set, and I managed to find a couple people to play, although I'm still looking for some serious players.


They let us loose for the whole afternoon, then rounded us up for some planned games (which strangely enough weren't nearly as fun). In the evening they served us dinner and held a worship service in a tent erected for that purpose. After that they lit a bonfire and we had smores and played some more volleyball until the buses came to take us back.

It's astounding how many people I'm meeting every day. And then trying to remember which names go with which faces, and which ones are doing what, and which room numbers they have, etc. Someone remarked how many people they've seen that remind them of other people they know. And it's true--I've seen half a dozen people that look so much like someone else I know that I want to call them by the other person's name.

But for the most part I'm enjoying it. I talked with someone today who is in my mentoring group (of about fifteen students) who loves to play Risk, and agrees with me that Lord of the Rings Risk is far better than the standard one; so we might have some gaming in the future...

Day the second

Today was another long day. More interesting than yesterday, because of meeting more people. (When I say "meet" I mean meet and talk for at least two minutes, as opposed to just exchanging names.) In the morning there was a service at the chapel on campus; I expected it to be very traditional, but they actually had a praise and worship band for most of the service. After that I went to lunch, where I met a couple of guys who are rooming down the hall from me. Brennan's a theater major, and Seth is an English major from Massachusets and a big Red Sox fan. We all had some odds and ends to buy so we carpooled into town and did some shopping.

Soon after we got back my roommate arrived. We moved his stuff in and I got to meet his parents. I'd met him previously; he's a pianist, like me, and a music major, unlike me. (Note for Giselle: I think that that grammar is correct because "like" is being used as a preposition, the way they used to use "like unto". So when Aragorn says "...and become a wraith like them"--he may not be so far off.)

Then we hurried to an introductory lecture (which was mostly to introduce the staff we need to know); afterwards we went to dinner. Tonight was their Welcome Banquet, which was very nice. I sat at a table with my peer mentor, who turns out to be a humanities major who is taking classes in Medieval Literature and C.S. Lewis's Fiction, loves the Silmarillion, plays bagpipes, and has travelled to Europe. We had an interesting discussion about foreign food and the differences between Vegemite and Nutella (the consensus being that Nutella is far superior).

The dining hall after dinner.

After dinner was vespers, which was a worship service with communion and a short message. There must have been more than a hundred people there; it was neat to see so many college students worshipping together in one room (alternately standing and sitting on the floor, since they don't use chairs). After vespers a group of students (including me) went to Sonics in town and chatted for a while. And then when I got back my roommate and I took turns playing our piano pieces for each other and watching piano performances on YouTube. Hence a late night...but a fun one.

So here I am...

In the last remaining minutes of my First Day. And yes, that means COLLEGE! I moved into my dorm room today; tomorrow my roommate is arriving, but for today I have the room to myself. The day has been filled with scores of new names and faces, which I've been handily managing to forget, as well as lots of information and sporadic conversation. It's been a very long day. (I'm drowsing over the keyboard as I type.)


I checked in this morning and my dad helped me to move all my stuff into my room, and I spent a lot of the afternoon unpacking and setting things up (that's my dorm in the picture). Then the rest of the family came over to see my quarters (and bring some things I'd forgotten to pack...); they left, and I went to dinner and sat with some acquaintances. After dinner all the students were split up into groups and went off with their peer mentors for introductions and scheduling.

Then came the highlight of the day--matriculation. The word comes from Latin matricula, "register". Sometime before Latin it was related to the root for "mother"--as in Alma Mater. But what it actually means is that all the new students filed ceremonially into the chapel to a thundering accompaniment on the organ; then everyone, parents, students, and professors, sang a hymn; the dean charged the students and professors to abide by the rules and traditions of the college, and the students and professors read their responses; and then all the students came up and signed a sheet of paper to be added to the college's book of names--the Lamb's book of life, as one of the professors jokingly called it. Every student, past and present, has their name on the list.

So I'm officially a student. After that a bagpiper led a long procession of professors in their robes, faculty members, students, parents, etc. from the chapel to the commons where a giant tent had been erected. They served refreshments (yummy cookies and yummier brownies), and they had a jazz band playing and lights all around, and people stayed a chatted for a long time. (I am told that this arrangement, with the tent and band and lights and refreshments, is a lot bigger than what they've done in previous years. I was also told that this college is one of the few small colleges that still has such pomp and ceremony surrounding matriculation. I love that.)


The last event of the day was a Residence Hall Floor Meeting, which was short and sweet--what to do in case of a problem, advice about dorm life, that sort of stuff. And then some of the guys left for an undisclosed location, while the rest of us--myself included--retired to their rooms.

"And there was evening and there was morning: the first day." - Genesis 1:5